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Montanari S, Simon-Cereijido G, Bai J, Subrahmanyam K. Heritage language development in Spanish-English-speaking preschoolers: Influences on growth and challenges in the first year of English-only instruction. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2024:1-27. [PMID: 39327850 DOI: 10.1017/s030500092400045x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/28/2024]
Abstract
This study investigates the changes in the Spanish lexical and grammatical skills of 26 Spanish-English dual language learners during their first year of preschool. We also explore the impact of age, gender, and maternal cultural orientation on children's language outcomes over time. The results show that, despite one year of English-only instruction, the children's Spanish productions became more intelligible, lexically diverse, and grammatical between 3;7 and 4;7. However, Spanish productions were mostly limited to sentence fragments and contained errors in grammatical gender, verb morphology, object clitic pronouns, and prepositions. Girls had an advantage over boys, as attested by the higher lexical diversity, mean length of utterance, and grammaticality of their Spanish productions. Both maternal enculturation and acculturation predicted the grammaticality of children's utterances, suggesting that mothers with high levels of orientation to both Latinx and American culture may be the most successful at promoting Spanish in the United States.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Jieru Bai
- California State University, Los Angeles
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2
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Byers-Heinlein K, Gonzalez-Barrero AM, Schott E, Killam H. Sometimes larger, sometimes smaller: Measuring vocabulary in monolingual and bilingual infants and toddlers. FIRST LANGUAGE 2024; 44:74-95. [PMID: 38283538 PMCID: PMC10810733 DOI: 10.1177/01427237231204167] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/30/2024]
Abstract
Vocabulary size is a crucial early indicator of language development, for both monolingual and bilingual children. Assessing vocabulary in bilingual children is complex because they learn words in two languages, and there remains significant controversy about how to best measure their vocabulary size, especially in relation to monolinguals. This study compared monolingual vocabulary with different metrics of bilingual vocabulary, including combining vocabulary across languages to count either the number of words or the number of concepts lexicalized and assessing vocabulary in a single language. Data were collected from parents of 743 infants and toddlers aged 8-33 months learning French and/or English, using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. The results showed that the nature and magnitude of monolingual-bilingual differences depended on how bilinguals' vocabulary was measured. Compared with monolinguals, bilinguals had larger expressive and receptive word vocabularies, similarly sized receptive concept vocabularies and smaller expressive concept vocabularies. Bilinguals' single-language vocabularies were smaller than monolinguals' vocabularies. The study highlights the need to better understand the role of translation equivalents in bilingual vocabulary development and the potential developmental differences in receptive and expressive vocabularies.
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Buttiler MB, Zhou Q, Uchikoshi Y. Reasons for migration, parental acculturation, and language: the case of Chinese American and Mexican American parents and dual language learners. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1237143. [PMID: 37744593 PMCID: PMC10513063 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1237143] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/08/2023] [Accepted: 08/22/2023] [Indexed: 09/26/2023] Open
Abstract
Migration is a complex process associated with a range of social, economic, and political reasons. In the U.S., almost one-quarter of the total population of parents are immigrant parents of children ages 0-10. Immigrant parents transmit values from their culture of origin as well as their language to their children. Additionally, they may undergo a process of cultural and psychological change known as acculturation. Research has shown that acculturation can be linked to parenting styles and adolescents' psychological well-being and behavioral problems. However, little is known about the associations among immigrant parents' acculturation, their home language and literacy practices, and their bilingual children's language skills. This study explores the relationships among reasons for migration, parental acculturation, home language and literacy practices, and child expressive vocabulary in English and their heritage language (HL). A group of 190 Spanish-English (N = 66) and Chinese-English (N = 124) dual language learners (DLLs) (mean age = 48.98 months) and their Chinese and Mexican parents (mean age of migration = 18.57 and 21.38 years old respectively participated. Frequency counts revealed that Mexican American families migrated to the U.S. mostly for multiple reasons, including joining family members, getting married, and looking for better education or job opportunities, whereas most Chinese American families migrated for family reasons only. Path analysis models showed that, for both cultural groups, language input in Spanish and Chinese mediated the relationship between parents' cultural orientations and DLLs' HL expressive vocabulary. These findings emphasize that despite the heterogeneity of immigrant families and the variability in DLLs' vocabulary skills in preschool, there exist some similarities across immigrant parents and bilingual children. A deeper understanding of acculturation practices and home language use can help educators better support children from diverse backgrounds and promote cultural awareness and sensitivity in the classroom.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Qing Zhou
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States
| | - Yuuko Uchikoshi
- School of Education, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, United States
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Perry JS, Gámez PB. Latino toddlers' bilingual output and their caregivers' bilingual input and acculturation. Infant Behav Dev 2023; 70:101804. [PMID: 36542897 PMCID: PMC9977142 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101804] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/22/2022] [Revised: 12/06/2022] [Accepted: 12/07/2022] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
The current study's aim was to investigate how Latino toddlers' bilingual language development relates to their caregivers' bilingual language use (i.e., input) and cultural orientation (to the US and their heritage country). Video recordings of caregiver-child interactions, collected when toddlers were approximately 1.5 (Mage = 18.73 months; SDage = 1.11) and 2 years old (Mage = 25.13 months; SDage = 1.29), were used to measure caregivers' (Mage = 33.29 years; SDage = 4.95) and toddlers' language use (i.e., output), respectively. Specifically, the total number of words used (i.e., tokens) in Spanish and English were derived from the video-recordings. In addition, caregivers' cultural orientation (i.e., acculturation; Mexican/heritage culture-oriented to US-oriented) was assessed using a multidimensional measure of acculturation. Descriptive analyses of tokens showed that caregivers and toddlers used both Spanish and English during interactions with each other, though caregivers used a higher ratio of Spanish-to-English (i.e., more Spanish than English) than did toddlers. Mediational analyses further revealed that caregivers' acculturation level was indirectly related to toddlers' bilingual language use, specifically as a function of caregivers' bilingual language use. These findings suggest that caregivers' bilingual input acts as a mediator between caregivers' acculturation and their toddlers' bilingual output.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jordan Sierra Perry
- Department of Psychology, Loyola University Chicago, 1032W. Sheridan Rd., Chicago, IL 60660, USA.
| | - Perla B Gámez
- Department of Psychology, Loyola University Chicago, 1032W. Sheridan Rd., Chicago, IL 60660, USA
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Bello A, Ferraresi P, Caselli MC, Perucchini P. The Predictive Role of Quantity and Quality Language-Exposure Measures for L1 and L2 Vocabulary Production among Immigrant Preschoolers in Italy. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH 2023; 20:1966. [PMID: 36767333 PMCID: PMC9914832 DOI: 10.3390/ijerph20031966] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/21/2022] [Revised: 01/15/2023] [Accepted: 01/16/2023] [Indexed: 06/18/2023]
Abstract
In this study, we investigated the lexical ability in L1 and L2 of 60 immigrant children who were 37 to 62 months old and exposed to minority languages (L1) and Italian (L2). Using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories, we measured children's vocabulary production in L1 and L2. From interviews, we collected data on quantitative language exposure (parental input, child output, length of exposure to L2 at preschool, and parental oral fluency) and qualitative home-language exposure (HLE) practices (active, play, and passive) in L1 and L2. We conducted stepwise regression analyses to explore which factors predicted children's vocabulary production in L1 and L2. The child's chronological age and parental education were not predictors of vocabulary production. L2 parental input, L1 child output, and L1 HLE-active practices explained 42% of the variance in children's L1 vocabulary production. L2 child output and L2 HLE-active practices explained 47% of the variance in children's L2 vocabulary production, whereas length of L2 exposure in preschool was a predictor only when we included quantitative language-exposure factors in the model. The effects of the quantity and quality of language exposure on lexical ability among preschool immigrant children are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arianna Bello
- Department of Education, Roma Tre University, Via Castro Pretorio 20, 00186 Roma, Italy
| | - Paola Ferraresi
- Department of Education, Roma Tre University, Via Castro Pretorio 20, 00186 Roma, Italy
| | - Maria Cristina Caselli
- Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council, Via Nomentana 56, 00161 Rome, Italy
| | - Paola Perucchini
- Department of Education, Roma Tre University, Via Castro Pretorio 20, 00186 Roma, Italy
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de Ruiter LE, Wen P, Chen S. The Assessment of Chinese Children's English Vocabulary-A Culturally Appropriate Receptive Vocabulary Test for Young Chinese Learners of English. Front Psychol 2022; 13:769415. [PMID: 35391964 PMCID: PMC8980544 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.769415] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/02/2021] [Accepted: 01/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Millions of Chinese children learn English at increasingly younger ages. Yet when it comes to measuring proficiency, educators, and researchers rely on assessments that have been developed for L1 learners and/or for different cultural contexts, or on non-validated, individually designed tests. We developed the Assessment of Chinese Children's English Vocabulary test (ACCE-V) to address the need for a validated, culturally appropriate receptive vocabulary test, designed specifically for young Chinese learners. The items are drawn from current teaching materials used in China, and the depictions of people and objects are culturally appropriate. We evaluated the instrument's reliability and validity in two field tests with a combined sample size of 1,092 children (181 children for the first field test and 911 children for the second field test, age range from 3.1 to 7.7, mean age: 5.2. Item Response Theory (IRT) analyses show that the ACCE-V is sufficiently sensitive to capture different proficiency levels and that it has good psychometric properties. ACCE-V scores were correlated with Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores, indicating concurrent validity. We found that children's age and English learning experience can significantly predict the scores of ACCE-V, but the effect of English learning experience is greater. The ACCE-V thus offers an alternative to existing vocabulary tests. We argue that culturally appropriate assessments like the ACCE-V are fairer to learners and help promote an English learning and teaching environment that is less dominated by Western cultures and native speaker norms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura E. de Ruiter
- Division of Human Communication, Development & Hearing, School of Health Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
| | - Peizhi Wen
- Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA, United States
- PACE Research Institute, Shenzhen, China
| | - Si Chen
- Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA, United States
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Antovich DM, Graf Estes K. One language or two? Navigating cross-language conflict in statistical word segmentation. Dev Sci 2020; 23:e12960. [PMID: 32145042 DOI: 10.1111/desc.12960] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/17/2019] [Revised: 01/22/2020] [Accepted: 02/21/2020] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Bilingual infants must navigate the similarities and differences between their languages to achieve native proficiency in childhood. Bilinguals learning to find individual words in fluent speech face the possibility of conflicting cues to word boundaries across their languages. Despite this challenge, bilingual infants typically begin to segment and learn words in both languages around the same time as monolinguals. It is possible that early bilingual experience may support infants' abilities to track regularities relevant for word segmentation separately across their languages. In a dual speech stream statistical word segmentation task, we assessed whether 16-month-old infants could track syllable co-occurrence regularities in two artificial languages despite conflicting information across the languages. We found that bilingual, but not monolingual, infants were able to segment the dual speech streams using statistical regularities. Although the two language groups did not differ on secondary measures of cognitive and linguistic development, bilingual infants' real-world experience with bilingual speakers was predictive of their performance in the dual language statistical segmentation task.
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Wright Karem R, Washington KN, Crowe K, Jenkins A, Leon M, Kokotek L, Raisor-Becker L, Westby C. Current Methods of Evaluating the Language Abilities of Multilingual Preschoolers: A Scoping Review Using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health–Children and Youth Version. Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch 2019; 50:434-451. [DOI: 10.1044/2019_lshss-18-0128] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this scoping review was to identify current measures used to evaluate the language abilities of multilingual preschoolers within the framework of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health–Children and Youth Version (ICF-CY;
World Health Organization, 2007
).
Method
This review adhered to established models for conducting a comprehensive, iterative scoping review outlined by
Arksey and O'Malley (2005)
and
Levac, Colquhoun, and O'Brien (2010)
and included the following phases: (a) articulating the research question; (b) identifying relevant studies; (c) selecting studies; (d) charting the data; and (e) collating, summarizing, and reporting the results. The ICF-CY was used to frame the identified measures (
World Health Organization, 2007
).
Results
Three hundred twenty-five peer-reviewed publications were identified and included in this review. The majority of publications used measures that evaluated the activity component of multilingual preschoolers' language (70%), with few evaluating participation (9%). Most identified measures (73%) assessed children's semantic language skills. We also observed that 88% of studies explicitly measured children's language input to interpret assessment results.
Conclusions
A variety of measures are currently used that address the activity component of the ICF-CY with a particular emphasis on semantics. There is, however, a dearth of measures examining language abilities for participation. The authors strongly recommend an increased focus on the development, use, and evaluation of measures that explicitly assess multilingual preschoolers' language participation, particularly in school-based settings.
Supplemental Material
https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8637206
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Affiliation(s)
- Rachel Wright Karem
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Cincinnati, OH
| | - Karla N. Washington
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Cincinnati, OH
| | - Kathryn Crowe
- School of Teacher Education, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia
| | - Alyssa Jenkins
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Cincinnati, OH
| | - Michelle Leon
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Cincinnati, OH
| | - Leslie Kokotek
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Cincinnati, OH
| | - Lesley Raisor-Becker
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Cincinnati, OH
| | - Carol Westby
- Bilingual Multicultural Services, Albuquerque, NM
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Bornstein MH. Parenting in acculturation: two contemporary research designs and what they tell us. Curr Opin Psychol 2017; 15:195-200. [PMID: 28813262 DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.03.020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/07/2017] [Accepted: 03/16/2017] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Massive population transfers are common today. To understand how immigrants negotiate variation and adjustment as they settle in a new culture, researchers have explored acculturation, the changes that individuals and groups undergo as a result of contact with a culture not their own. Parents have crucial roles to play in acculturation. Parenting is instantiated in cognitions and practices, and cognitions and practices of parents are multifaceted and influenced by many factors, including parents' own individual characteristics, their children, and their cultural experiences. This article describes, evaluates, and illustrates two unique research designs that are used today to study acculturation of parenting cognitions and practices. In one design, parenting in acculturating cultures in the same culture of destination are compared; in the second design, parents in a culture of origin, parents from that culture of origin acculturating to a new culture, and parents in that culture of destination are compared. Acculturation is one of the most prominent individual-difference constructs in contemporary psychology, and understanding parents' cognitions and practices is fundamental to understanding parenting and acculturation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marc H Bornstein
- Child and Family Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Suite 8030, 6705 Rockledge Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892-7971, USA.
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Stolarova M, Brielmann AA, Wolf C, Rinker T, Burke T, Baayen H. Early Vocabulary in Relation to Gender, Bilingualism, Type, and Duration of Childcare. Adv Cogn Psychol 2016; 12:130-144. [PMID: 28127412 PMCID: PMC5225991 DOI: 10.5709/acp-0192-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/11/2015] [Accepted: 07/26/2016] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
This study investigates the predictive value of child-related and environmental characteristics for early lexical development. The German productive vocabulary of 51 2-year-olds (27 girls), assessed via parental report, was analyzed taking children's gender, the type of early care they experienced, and their mono- versus bilingual language composition into consideration. The children were from an educationally homogeneous group of families and state-regulated daycare facilities with high structural quality. All investigated subgroups exhibited German vocabulary size within the expected normative range. Gender differences in vocabulary composition, but not in size, were observed. There were no general differences in vocabulary size or composition between the 2 care groups. An interaction between the predictors gender and care arrangement showed that girls without regular daycare experience before the age of 2 years had a somewhat larger vocabulary than all other investigated subgroups of children. The vocabulary size of the 2-year-old children in daycare correlated positively with the duration of their daycare experience prior to testing. The small subgroup of bilingual children investigated exhibited slightly lower but still normative German expressive vocabulary size and a different vocabulary composition compared to the monolingual children. This study expands current knowledge about relevant predictors of early vocabulary. It shows that in the absence of educational disadvantages the duration of early daycare experience of high structural quality is positively associated with vocabulary size but also points to the fact that environmental characteristics, such as type of care, might affect boys' and girls' early vocabulary in different ways.
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Affiliation(s)
- M Stolarova
- Department of Children and Child Care, German Youth Institute, Munich, Germany
| | - A A Brielmann
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York City, NY, USA
| | - C Wolf
- Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Kantonssital St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland
| | - T Rinker
- Department of Linguistics and Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany
| | - T Burke
- Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph, Canada
| | - H Baayen
- Department of General Linguistics, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
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Kim SY, Shen Y, Hou Y, Tilton KE, Juang L, Wang Y. Annual Review of Asian American Psychology, 2014. ASIAN AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY 2015; 6:291-332. [PMID: 26925199 PMCID: PMC4765738 DOI: 10.1037/aap0000031] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/02/2023]
Abstract
This 2014 review of Asian American psychology is the sixth review in the series. It includes 316 articles that met the inclusion criteria established by the past five annual reviews. Featured articles were derived from three sources: 137 were generated via the search term "Asian American" in PyscINFO, 111 were generated via a search for specific Asian American ethnic groups, and 32 were generated via author searches of articles that met the inclusion criteria. The top primary topic was health and health-related behaviors, the most frequently employed study design was cross-sectional, and the most studied Asian American ethnic group was Chinese. This year's review includes information on the target population of the primary topic, the age range and developmental period of participants, and whether the study design was cross-sectional or longitudinal. It also identifies top authors and journals contributing to the 2014 annual review. These new features reveal that the most common target population of the primary topic was youths; studies most commonly included emerging adults ages 18-25; cross-sectional study design was employed more often than longitudinal design; the top contributor to the 2014 review was Stephen Chen, who authored the highest number of papers included; and the Asian American Journal of Psychology generated the highest number of publications for this review.
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Affiliation(s)
- Su Yeong Kim
- University of Texas at Austin, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, 108 East Dean Keeton Street, Stop A2702, Austin, TX 78712, , (512) 471-5524
| | - Yishan Shen
- University of Texas at Austin, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, 108 East Dean Keeton Street, Stop A2702, Austin, TX 78712, , (512) 983-7551
| | - Yang Hou
- University of Texas at Austin, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, 108 East Dean Keeton Street, Stop A2702, Austin, TX 78712, , (512) 660-2236
| | - Kelsey E Tilton
- University of Texas at Austin, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, 108 East Dean Keeton Street, Stop A2702, Austin, TX 78712, , (512) 956-459-4212
| | - Linda Juang
- University of Potsdam, College of Human Sciences, Education, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany, +49 (0)172 1882255,
| | - Yijie Wang
- University of Texas at Austin, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, 108 East Dean Keeton Street, Stop A2702, Austin, TX 78712, , (512) 289-8136
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